


Another Crew

by TheArchimage



Category: Original Work, ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 | JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Genre: Based on a roleplay, Blood, Gen, Hamon (JoJo), Not much of a plot, Self-Indulgent, Sorry Not Sorry, Stands (JoJo), fight
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2020-09-26 03:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20382598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheArchimage/pseuds/TheArchimage
Summary: In Tokyo, the Speedwagon Foundation is under attack by a mysterious enemy. A rag-tag group of Stand and Hamon users are the only people who can stop Grandmaster Flash and his underlings, the Furious Five. These are some of their stories.





	1. Pantera

**Author's Note:**

> This is by far the most self-indulgent thing I’ve ever written.  
I am in a tabletop roleplaying group which was playing a JoJo-themed game. We had a lot of fun with it, but the GM had to abandon the game due to a lack of time (also the ruleset we were using was not especially conducive to JoJo-esque fights). But I got inspired and thought of a couple neat battles for our characters to engage in, so I wrote a little something for the group. And, well, here we are. I don’t know how many of these I will write, but I know a couple other group members promised/threatened to write their own stories so I can add them as co-authors if they finish. Mostly I used this as an excuse to practice writing fight scenes, so try to enjoy it in that sense.  
The character Ryouma Touzen, his Stand Discovery Channel, and the enemy Stand Pantera were created by me; all other characters were created by other members of the gaming group and are used with permission.
> 
> Exposition: The mentioned Stand Pulp can shape and give life to clay, and can even use this clay to replace lost body parts a la Golden Experience. It was previously established in the game that sufficiently skilled Hamon users could see Stands and even attack them with Hamon; this is not official canon but someone wanted to play a Hamon user and it’s not like there isn’t a history of the series ignoring strict logic and consistency when it makes for more fun fights.

It was another fine day in Tokyo. The sun was out but there was just enough cloud cover to keep the heat from getting too oppressive. It was the middle of the day, so salarymen and -women were steadily walking to their destination, eyes facing forward but not truly seeing anything. Even a crew as bizarre as theirs would attract no notice.

Ryouma Touzen walked with a heavy slouch, his legs kicking out in front of him so it appeared his feet were dragging the rest of his body behind them. His ratty jeans and torn t-shirt gave off an air of carefully crafted nonchalance; either he spent hundreds of dollars and hours every morning to look like this or no money or time at all, nothing in between. His eyes darted from left to right on high alert, betraying his otherwise lazy appearance. Sitting on his shoulder was Hector the parrot, preening and chirping. She looked regal in her green plumage with wings the colors of the rainbow, yet anything more than a cursory glance would reveal eyes shining with complex thought and intelligence. Next to them was a young girl, almost but not quite a woman, known only as the Crimson Swan. She was wearing a fiery red leotard and a tutu which flared out like phoenix feathers. She had a katana in its sheath strapped to her back, within easy reach if she needed it at a moment's notice. Her face was pinched in a way which suggested she was in a bad mood, which she usually was whenever she was on Speedwagon Foundation business. She sighed, “Remind me why I’m hanging out with a couple of Stand users again?”

Ryouma explained, “Jotaro got torn to shreds by the Stand user attack yesterday. Pulp’s clay saved his life, but those replacement parts aren’t going to hold up if we don’t keep a certain _someone_ from chewing them to bits.”

Hector lowered her head a fraction of an inch, the closest she could get to showing shame. “… I can’t help it, the clay is tasty…” There was little trace of a bird’s squawk in her speech, so someone who could not see them could easily think Hector’s words were coming from another person.

Ryouma continued, “So the Speedwagon boys are arranging a trip to a town called ‘Morioh’. Apparently there’s a Stand user there that can give him a more permanent fix, and maybe do something about that guy we pulled from the strange dimension.”

Swan rolled her eyes. “I know all that. But what does that have to do with us, here, walking around in broad daylight?”

“Ah,” he said. “That, is my cunning plan. The man called Grandmaster Flash almost certainly has the HQ under surveillance. Even now he’s probably organizing another attack. If Jotaro gets into another fight in his condition he might really die. But if we leave the Speedwagon Foundation building and wander off, he’ll jump at the bait and get someone to attack us right away, before he’s finished planning. So he might make a mistake and send the wrong Stand user, and that’s one less we’ll have to worry about later.”

“In other words,” Swan said with a smirk. “We’re looking for trouble. And… I think we’ve found it.” Hector turned toward her and cocked her head to the side. “You haven’t noticed? It’s still autumn, it’s not supposed to get dark out this early.”

It was true; the area around them started to become less bright, as though a thundercloud had moved overhead. Other people on the street looked around them, clearly unnerved by night beginning to descend so suddenly. “We should get to a less heavily populated area if we can,” Ryouma suggested. “We don’t want any bystanders getting caught in the crossfire. Or worse, trying to get involved.”

“No time for that,” Swan said, flicking her sword loose from its scabbard with her thumb. “The darkness is closing in fast. We fight here or die in flight.” No sooner had the words left her lips when gloom fell as a curtain, completely enshrouding the area. It was so dark they could not see their own hands in front of their faces. The sounds of walking feet stopped, replaced by concerned mutterings. Almost as quickly those mutterings turned to horrified screams and the horrible noise of tearing flesh. The scent of panic and spilled blood filled the air.

Ryouma called out, “_Discovery Channel!_” A pair of goggles, complete with a skullcap, appeared on his head and fit over his eyes. With a click and a whirr his vision changed to the gray-green wash of night vision. Immediately he saw a horrifying sight; a large jungle cat had pounced on a person! The man’s scream rang out and was suddenly silenced as the cat bit into his head, crushing his skull with no visible effort. The night vision did not allow him to see in anything but green, but he did not need to imagine what the true color of the liquid staining the cat’s muzzle was. All around it were the corpses of other people who just happened to be in the crosswalk at the time the Stand attacked. The cat turned toward Ryouma and licked it chops as it sized up its next meal. He wasted no time. From the edges of his vision tiny needles shot out from the corners of his goggles, a stream of projectiles that could shred through skin. But they failed to penetrate the cat’s hide; instead they merely stuck in, causing no more discomfort than a porcupine’s quills would cause to a tank tread. The cat sprinted off, trying to circle around him.

He swiveled around, trying to keep the cat in his field of vision. “The Stand is… a large cat, like a cougar or tiger. It’s very fast, even though I can see it clearly I’m having trouble following it. Also, its hide is thick enough that my needles can’t break through! I’m not dealing any visible damage!”

“But they’re getting stuck there, right?” Swan suggested. “I’ve seen you use those needles to stop people from breathing. Just do that.”

“Acupuncture is all about the flow of energy,” he seethed. “It’s drawing chi to very specific points on the body to change how the body functions. It was developed for use on humans, not animals! Of course I never learned enough about cat anatomy to perform acupuncture on one!”

Swan nodded. “Sooooo, you’re useless. Alright, time to see what I can do.” It was a blade specially made to channel Hamon energy through, allowing her to fight and win against Stands even though she did not have one herself. All she needed was one opening and her sword would cut through the Stand and kill the user. But… “I can’t even see to the end of my sword. This thing could be right next to me and I’d never see it.”

“Eyes work off reflected light,” Ryouma said, fishing in his pocket to pull out a lighter. “In a darkness this deep you won’t see anything, but even a little bit of light will help you adjust. I’m going to flick this on and-”

“Idiot, don’t you-”

He only received a moment of light and heat before the darkness swallowed it up. Not just the top of the lighter, but the top of his thumb and the side of his index finger vanished, a chunk of his hand suddenly missing like an ice cream scoop dug it away. Ryouma cried out in pain and dropped what was left of the lighter as his wounds began to bleed profusely.

Swan grumbled, “The first thing an opponent would do is pull out a lighter or flashlight, you should have assumed it had a way to deal with it. … You alright?”

“I’m fine,” he said, cradling his badly bleeding hand. “I can’t use this hand anymore, but at least it let me figure something out. That attack was too deliberate. This is too strong to be a remote controlled Stand, and its behavior is too complex for an automatic Stand. The user should be nearby.” The goggles over his eyes whirred and shifted, the lenses extending out from his head. “Even if he’s hiding behind a building, my Discovery Channel should be able to find and attack him. I just need a moment to scan the area, guard me while I do that.”

As he said it, Discovery Channel moved to do it. He turned his head to the left, peering past a trash can, through a dumpster, through the wall and into the room beyond. He scanned one room at a time, searching for someone who was not blindly fumbling along in the dark, not scared and shuddering, but watching the battle intently enough to-

He was only searching for a couple seconds when he felt a searing pain and flowing heat on his right thigh as a set of claws dug deeply into them, severing muscles and tendons as easily as cutting through air. “Shit!” Ryouma seethed, holding his good hand to the wound to slow the bleeding as he collapsed to one knee. “I thought I told you to keep it off me!”

“How the heck do we do that when we can’t see the thing?!” Hector screeched. As she did so a second, larger bird erupted from her back. In anything other than this pure darkness it would be a majestic golden bird wrapped in electricity: Hector’s Stand, Free Bird. It called down a lightning bolt, which was attracted to a nearby light post and grounded out. Too many tall things around… if Hector knew precisely where the enemy Stand was, she could direct the lightning directly there. As it was, electricity was lazy; a blind shot would just get absorbed by the metal spires around them.

Ryouma took stock of his injury. “I… don’t think I can escape anymore.” He punctuated his lament by trying to stand up, but after a moment of straining collapsed back onto one knee. “It cut my hamstring. Even if I revitalize myself with acupuncture, my leg physically can’t support my weight.”

“I hope you aren’t asking me to carry you,” Swan scoffed, squinting into the darkness while wielding her sword with both hands.

“Nah, if you tried to escape with me it would just pounce on you the second you turned your back. You’d be dead in an instant.” He looked back into the gloom to see the cat standing no more than 5 meters in front of him, looking intently in his direction as its tail flicked back and forth. It was watching him, he realized. It knew he was the only one who could see it. The moment he looked away it knew it would be free to attack again, and this time it would be for the kill. “Hector,” he said. “If I fall unconscious from blood loss, this thing will kill both of you. But if you fly up it shouldn’t be able to follow you. Search from the air, you have to find the user and take them out.”

Hector did not reply. In fact it was clear she was not even listening; she furled and unfurled her wings, the magnificent Free Bird copying her movements. “If you want to help,” Hector said with a strained voice. “Hit it with more needles. Get a lot of them stuck in its skin.”

“What good will that do?” Ryouma said. “We already know the needles are too weak to hurt it.”

“Just do it!”

Taking orders from a bird, even an extremely intelligent bird… he really had fallen far, hadn’t he? Still, it was clear Hector had some sort of plan, which was better than what he had. He fired another spray of needles at the cat, and as before it was not quite fast enough to jump away. Dozens of needles stuck into its paws, chest, and face… to no effect. He cursed, “It’s pointless! Its hide is too thick!”

“I’m going after it,” Swan said, having clearly had enough. “Tell me where it is.”

Ryouma nodded. “All right. It’s… three meters to your right, at the two o’clock position.” Swan dashed forward, holding her sword over her head and bringing it down at the specified area. The cat leapt to the side, nimbly evading the attack and jumping back and forth to stymie her efforts to find it. Ryouma desperately tried to keep up: “It went right! No, it jumped to your left! It’s circling slowly now, but don’t- ah! When you stepped forward it jumped, _behind you!_”

Crimson Swan whirled around and held up her blade, but just a fraction of a second too slow to avoid the attack completely. However, her fast movement turned a claw swipe meant to hamstring her into a glancing blow to her front thigh, leaving a gash in her tutu and a hairline scratch of red. She growled in frustration as she swung her blade down, but the cat had already leapt away before she could counterattack. “Tch, this is getting us nowhere,” she grumbled. Meanwhile Ryouma felt his eyelids beginning to droop. No way… was he going into shock from blood loss? But if he lost consciousness, the Stand would attack immediately. There would be no defense. Damn it…

Suddenly the cat was covered by a painfully bright green fog. “Hey, what’s going on now? I can’t see it anymore!” Was this the end? Had the cat found some way to block his vision?

“What are you, blind? There’s something there!” Crimson Swan shouted, sword at the ready. “It’s light! In the darkness, there’s light!” Indeed, there were now a faintly glowing series of blue lights. As the cat moved the lights moved with him, and it took her a moment to realize what they were. “It’s your needles! They’re glowing!”

Discovery Channel switched to normal vision, allowing Ryouma to see for himself. His needles had a phantom blue glow about them, clearly illuminating the cat for all to see. That was not something he did… the idea came to him and he looked at Hector. The military macaw grinned broadly, clearly very pleased with herself. Ryouma marveled, “This is… St. Elmo’s Fire.”

Originally feared by sailors as a curse, St. Elmo’s Fire is a phenomenon where a ship’s mast will begin glowing with an unearthly blue light. It’s caused by a massive amount of electrons in the air reacting with pointed metal objects, and is the harbinger of a major, imminent storm. Free Bird had spent the last few moments gathering more and more of an electrical charge in the area, until the charge became great enough to react with Discovery Channel’s needles and pierce the gloom!

Hector crowed happily. “Jotaro told me it happens on ship masts before a big storm!”

Ryouma laughed once, his eyelids beginning to close again. “Not bad, Hector. Now even without me… you’ll know exactly where it is.” He fought to stay conscious; if he passed out his Stand would vanish, and that included the needles. He needed to stay awake until the end…

Crimson Swan saw the cat start to look down at its paw and shouted out a warning, “If you snuff out those lights there won’t be much of you left. And if you can’t vanish, you can’t move fast enough to escape me. Normally I would give you a chance to pledge your loyalty to the Speedwagon Foundation before I killed you-”

Something happened very fast. The cat attempted to push off against the ground with its back paws and lunge at Ballerina with an open mouth. In the time it took to blink Ballerina had stepped past it, and was already in the process of returning her blade to the sheath.

“… but you attacked in the middle of a crowded city. Even if the Foundation would forgive you, I won’t.” As she clicked the blade in place the cat's head flew up and into the air before dissipating. The darkness vanished, depositing them onto a normal Tokyo street corner. Well, normal except for the passers-by killed by the enemy Stand as well as ruined cars which careened out of control when their drivers stopped being able to find the road in front of them. From somewhere nearby they heard a doubtlessly headless body hit the ground, but it was not anywhere they could see.

Hector perched on Ryouma’s unconscious head, making a click-click-caw noise. Swan looked from the bird to Ryouma’s unconscious body. Hector made a loud _kraa-ack_ sound and her eyes turned glassy as she pretended to be a normal bird. “Damn it,” Swan grumbled. “I’m gonna have to drag him back after all, aren’t I? So much for your 'cunning plan'...”


	2. The Doors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is based on an actual session of the game as it was run, and there are certain characters and concepts here that need to be introduced for the next story I want to tell to make sense. The character “Jeremy” and his Stand Pulp are based off another player’s character; significant details have been changed because I have been unable to reach the character’s player for permission to use their character and assistance with portraying them properly.

A lanky man in a denim vest and wild hair swaggered through the gates in front of the Speedwagon Foundation and onto the front lawn, his smile going from ear to ear. He planted his feet akimbo, taking a megaphone in his left hand and a revolver in his right. “Heads up you Speedwagon losers!” he shouted through the megaphone. “I am Chuu Seishi, the guy who’s been sent by Grandmaster Flash to kill all of you! How am I gonna do that, you ask? Like this!” The man pointed his revolver at his own head, grinning widely. “Do you get it? My Stand is the kind that activates after the death of the user. It’s called ‘Megadeth’. That’s right, and the moment I die it will annihilate everything in a one mile radius! It was foolish to put your headquarters in the middle of downtown Tokyo… all I have to do is pull the trigger and millions of people will die! None of you had better get any funny ideas, either! If I get so much as a papercut I’ll blow all of you sky high!” He chuckled. “So, all of your Stand users have until the count of 10 to come out. You will all walk backwards out of the building and line up three meters from the entrance. Then, I’m going to put a bullet in the back of your heads, one by one! I’ll have a second gun pointing at my own head, of course, and if any of you so much as twitches I’ll turn this city into a crater! Are you ready? I’m counting!” He inhaled. “One! Two! Three! Fou-”

In the middle of speaking several needles stuck into vital points on his body, paralyzing him completely. He was stuck in place with his finger still on the trigger and his face frozen in a manic grin. He fell forward, still trapped in his previous pose and smashing his face into the walkway.

Jotaro Kujo looked on from his vantage point from a window of the break room on the second floor. “What was that about?” he asked.

“Nothing of consequence,” Ryouma answered next to him as Discovery Channel faded from his face. He watched as several Speedwagon employees marched out, grabbed Chuu’s paralyzed body, and hauled it inside. “He should be sedated while everyone else figures out what to do with him; my suggestion would be to put him on a jet plane, fly over a desert, and boot him out at an altitude of 12 km. We have more important things to attend to, like the two other Stand users that were found today.” He turned to look at the two people he just spoke of. One of them sat on a couch, his knee bouncing with nervous energy. He was a young American man in a green blazer with a red tie. His slick backed hair gave the appearance of someone successful and confident, but his wide-eyed stare and the way he nervously chewed his thumbnail destroyed that illusion. Next to him was a Japanese man with a thin face and a salaryman’s suit whose attention was entirely focused on a puzzle box the size of a fist which he fiddled with obsessively.

“Two in one day,” Jotaro mused. “And neither of them put up a fight. That’s a lot better than what usually happens.”

Ryouma countered, “If you didn’t want us killing people you shouldn’t have tapped Crimson Swan to help. But in this case I wasn’t attacked. The American is Jeremy. He was a walk-in at my clinic and he happened to mention being able to see my goggles. I didn’t really want to fight him and he didn’t want to fight me, so I brought him here to figure out what to do with him.”

Jeremy chuckled and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, but what kind of luck is that? Seriously, there are dozens of acupuncture technicians in Tokyo, and I just happen to run into the one run by a Stand user?”

Jotaro smirked. “It’s not as strange as you might think. Stand users tend to attract other Stand users.” He nodded his head toward the man sitting on the couch. “What about this one?”

“That one’s Swan’s,” Ryouma said. “Swan did her usual ‘join the Foundation or die’ and he said he’d join up.” Ryouma correctly interpreted Jotaro’s raised eyebrow. “Yeah, she was pretty surprised too. She managed to find him as soon as he was stabbed with an arrowhead by a member of the Furious Five. His name’s Wan Kuraibu. That thing he’s playing with is his Stand, or some part of it. He’s still trying to figure out how it works.”

“Is that so?” Jotaro said. “So where is Swan now?”

“She was hit with the arrowhead and got a Stand, so who knows what she’s doing. Maybe seppuku?”

Jotaro got an intensely concerned look on his face and hurriedly left the room to check on her and make sure she was not doing what Ryouma so blithely suggested. Ryouma returned his attention to the new guys. “So that’s basically it. The Speedwagon Foundation is a philanthropic organization, even if our methods are sometimes outside the realm of strictly legal. But we have good pay, a generous benefits package, and they even let Stand users pursue their own goals.”

“Is that truly okay?” Wan asked without looking up from his puzzle. “You will let me make money from this?”

Ryouma explained, “It’s not unheard of for someone to earn a living from their Stand. My Discovery Channel, for instance. With its abilities to zoom in and fire needles with unerring accuracy, I can make a pretty good living as an acupuncturist.”

“I’ll say,” Jeremy said, rubbing his shoulder. “I’ve never felt better.”

Ryouma continued, “But, it matters what you do with it. The Speedwagon Foundation can’t really turn a blind eye if people use their Stands to become contract killers or terrorists. That’s why they employ people like me and Swan to take them out, because you can’t fight a Stand without powers of your own.”

Wan nodded but it was clear he was not really paying attention. His full focus was on his Stand. He adjusted a few pieces, turning it in his hands before twisting it this way and that. “Aha,” Wan said at last. “I think something interesting will happen if I do… this!” He grabbed the shape at both ends and pulled outward. The puzzle opened up like a flower, revealing an even more intricate puzzle about the size of a dinner plate. At the same time a white door with a brass doorknob appeared on the southern wall of the room. The wall that was against the edge of the building.

A pair of goggles appeared on Ryouma’s head and fitted around his eyes. “That’s odd,” he said, though he did not sound particularly concerned. “I can’t see through the door with Discovery Channel, but all around it I can see Tokyo just fine. That door might lead somewhere other than a two-story drop. Anything might be on the other side. I have a long range Stand; Jeremy, you open the door.”

“What?!” Jeremy protested. “But… my Stand isn’t good at hand-to-hand combat either…”

“It’s your Stand,” Ryouma said to Wan. “It might not do anything unless you’re the one who opens it.”

“Hm?” Wan looked up from the puzzle when his name was mentioned. “Oh, I guess. Let me just-” He set the puzzle down. As soon as he did so the door vanished. He blinked, then picked his puzzle back up again. The door reappeared exactly as he left it. “Okaaaaay. So I have to have my Stand with me for it to work.”

“Not uncommon,” Ryouma said, sighing dejectedly. “Alright alright, I’ll open it. Just… stand back.” He stretched his fingers as he walked up to the door. He grasped the doorknob, took a deep breath… then swung it open while stepping behind the door, so anything on the other side looking to attack would see Wan and Jeremy and not him. Both of them wanted to complain, but they were so stunned by what they saw on the other side of the door they could not say anything. Ryouma mentally counted to three, and when nothing came out to try and kill them he decided to risk looking himself. He stepped out from behind the open door and peered through the doorway, and then he understood what had taken his compatriots’ breath away.

While it was a clear day in Tokyo, the world of the door was in the middle of a rainstorm. Though they were on the second floor of the Speedwagon Foundation building, Wan’s door opened up to reveal solid ground on the other side. But what drew their attention and made it clear what the Stand was doing was in the skyline; not far from where the door opened the Arc de Triomphe stood across several lanes of traffic. Ryouma slammed the door shut. “Wan, why does your Stand create a door to Paris?”

“I-I-I-I don’t know? Maybe if I…” He began twisting, shifting, rotating, and pulling on the puzzle in his hands. As he did so the door morphed and shifted, changing color, style, and size seemingly at random.

“Hold it, stop!” Ryouma shouted. Wan did, settling on a gray metal door with rusted hinges. Ryouma sucked in air and opened the door. Immediately a powerful stench emitted from the opening. The stink made his eyes water and his knees buckle. He caught a glimpse of darkness lit only by the light of their own room, damp stonework, and metal pipes running along the walls before the door slammed shut. “Damn, this time it was a sewer!” he groused. “Get some air freshener in here, I feel like my nose is dying…”

Jeremy helped him to the chair. “Hey, how about I get the next one? These doors don’t seem to lead anywhere dangerous, so maybe it’s not trying to attack us? Wan, try one more.”

Wan flipped his puzzle around and made a few more adjustments. The door ended up as ornately carved oak with a brass doorknob. When Jeremy opened the door it was like it opened to another world. The door was situated in the middle of a stairwell, no landing or step at all, simply a door smack in the middle of the wall. It was not the only staircase in the room, either; there was another set of stairs on the opposite wall, leading up to the ceiling but with no visible hole to actually reach the upper floor. The floor of this room visibly slanted to one side, so one would get dizzy or even fall over if they stared at it for too long.

“Oh, I heard of this!” Jeremy said with a smile. “It’s called, uh uh uh, right!, the Winchester Mansion! Apparently the woman who lived there went insane and started building tons of additions everywhere in her home. Staircases that double over on themselves, doors that open to blank walls, it’s nuts!”

“It certainly is,” Ryouma grimaced. “Where is that, by the way?”

Jeremy thought for a moment. “It’s in, uh, California I think. Wait, so how does-”

“I thought so,” Ryouma said as he shut the door. “Wan, your Stand isn’t just a puzzle box, it’s a code. Every different configuration on that connects this door to any other door in the world. If you could decipher its secrets…”

“You could go anywhere!” Jeremy finished for him. “You could go across the world in seconds! Get into restricted areas! Rob banks after hours! Uh, maybe not that last one?”

Wan, however, seemed unimpressed. He stared at the puzzle some more, reaching out with a trembling hand. “Not yet,” he said. “There’s a deeper secret in this. There’s another power to unlock. If I solve the puzzle, if I open it to the next level… I can feel it! I’m so close!” He made another series of adjustments to his puzzle then pulled at it from opposite sides, and again it expanded outward in a Euclidean nightmare. It was the size of Wan’s torso now, riddled with cracks and lines which suggested particular moves but seemed all but impossible to determine how it could move at all. The door changed once more, into a plain white door with a gold handle instead of a knob. This door looked like any of the other doors Wan’s Stand had made, but this one had a palpable aura of menace behind it.

Jeremy and Ryouma both looked at each other, then touched their fingertips to the noses at the same time. “Nose goes,” Ryouma informed Jeremy.

Jeremy protested, “What?! No w-way, I got it before you! I know I did!”

Ryouma swallowed something with an audible gulp. “I opened two, you open two. Fair’s fair.”

Jeremy grimaced. He looked at the door out of the corner of his eye, feeling sweat break out against his skin. “… Fine, fine! All I have to do is open it, right? See where it leads now? Then we can… do something else?” Jeremy stomped over to the door and stood in front of it. He opened and closed his hands a few times, looking back for support and receiving a nod from Ryouma. His teeth began chattering. He slowly, ever so slowly, reached for the handle. He grasped it with trembling fingers. “It’s… c-c-cold,” he mentioned. “Not freezing, just, a little cold.” He pushed the handle down and pulled, the door opening without the hinges making a sound. Behind the door was a black void with tiny dots of light. At first Jeremy thought he was looking into a night sky, but the bright objects were too far apart and too oddly-shaped to be any celestial body. “What in the…?” Jeremy craned his neck to look up into the endless black expanse. “Guys, I don’t think this leads anywhere in the world. It opens into space or something.” He put forward the toe of his shoe like he was testing the water and was surprised to find something solid. “Hey, there’s a floor here! I know it sounds crazy, but I think we can go in.”

“That could be dangerous,” Ryouma warned him. “We don’t know what this place is, it might not be safe for humans to be there.”

Jeremy stuck his head inside and took a deep breath. “Air’s a bit stale, but it doesn’t seem dangerous. Gonna test this floor out here…” He put his foot back inside and put more of his weight on the foot before stepping fully inside. From the outside he appeared to be standing on nothing at all. He cautiously took steps forward, testing out each new foothold before placing his full weight on it. “Yeah, it’s a little cold, but nothing too bad. Like any other day in the fall. Hey, I bet you could see lots of cool things with-”

Jeremy stopped in mid-sentence. Not just what he was saying, his entire body froze in mid-step. He was as still as a statue, not even breathing.

Wan blinked. “Um… is he okay?”

Ryouma used Discovery Channel to look inside Jeremy’s body. “He’s completely stopped,” he said dispassionately. “No breathing, his heart isn’t beating, even his cellular processes have ceased. Even his chakras aren’t active, so my acupuncture isn’t going to help him.”

The salaryman laughed nervously. “C’mon, you’re not going to just… leave him like that, are you? Isn’t he your friend?”

“I just met him today,” Ryouma shrugged. “I wouldn’t really call him a friend. … Though it would leave a bad taste in my mouth if he was stuck like this forever.”

“Maybe my Stand can help?” Wan offered. He got up off the couch and started cautiously inching toward Jeremy. “I mean, this is a power of my Stand, right? So maybe I can-”

He had hardly gone two steps when Jeremy started moving again, continuing his previous line, “- Discovery Channel. There’s lots of things floating in here but they’re-”

“Stop!” Ryouma said. “Jeremy, don’t move!” Jeremy stopped, turning toward him with a terrified wince. “There’s something strange going on with that place. You stopped in place for a few moments, and if you move carelessly you might not make it back next time.”

Jeremy ran back out through the door with a yelp. Once he was safely back in the office he cast a sideways glance at the door like it were a dog that just bit him. “Wh-what’s going on? What is that place?”

“Don’t know,” Ryouma said, grabbing a paperweight from the desk. “But I’m going to try something.” He grabbed a paperweight off a desk and hurled it through the door. It went inside a short distance before stopping in mid-air. “Alright. Wan, how about we go together and fetch that?” Wan gave him a quick look of disbelief before it changed to a determined nod. The two of them cautiously approached the paperweight. But something strange was happening; every time Wan stepped closer, the paperweight would glide forward a tiny bit on its original trajectory, as though Wan was pushing it away. “I thought so,” Ryouma said. “Whatever’s causing this, Wan is immune. Everything stops if you aren’t close by.”

“Huh,” Wan said. “So this place is like my own private area…”

“I don’t think so,” Jeremy said. “It looks like there are things in there, in the distance. I couldn’t see what they were.”

“Let me take care of that.” Ryouma looked around with Discovery Channel, viewing the various specks. “Sod, statues, a lot of brickwork cut in circular patterns. It looks a lot like someone tore apart a bunch of buildings with an ice cream scoop or something. Hold up… there’s a person in here. Maybe a hundred meters in. He looks like he’s in bad shape… among other things, he’s frozen like Jeremy was a moment ago. Looks like he’s missing a few limbs, too.”

Jeremy squinted. “Can you see who he is?”

“Nobody I recognize. Stocky, muscular, dark-skinned. Maybe African or Arabic, definitely not from around our neck of the woods. So, whadda you wanna do about him? We don’t know who he is so it could go either way on whether he’s an enemy or not.”

The American hugged himself and shivered. “… I don’t think I’d want to leave anyone trapped in this place forever. It’s too scary… being locked in time, not even knowing you’re stuck or how long you’ve been there. He might be hundreds of years old.”

Ryouma sighed. “This is my good deed for the year, you hear me? I don’t want anyone getting on my case for being an asshole after this.” He gestured inside with his head. “Let’s go, you two. It shouldn’t be dangerous as long as we stay close to Wan, but don’t let your guard down. We still don’t know what this place is or how it works.” The other two men nodded and they began their journey.

As Jeremy noted, it was chilly inside but not uncomfortably so. An invisible floor carried them in the direction they wished, tilting up slightly to bring them directly to the floating man stuck in time. There was no source of light visible, but every one of them could see clearly as though lit by a noonday sun. Ryouma studied the various other objects floating in the space while they walked; he found no other people, but there was a chunk of fence, an armful of dirt, and other bits of scenery and ruins. It took about ten minutes of walking to reach the man Ryouma had seen, moving slightly slower than a normal walking speed owing to Wan’s limp. The man was stocky and muscular with a wide build and dark skin. He was dressed in loose-fitting red robes and wore a necklace of golden medallions. His left forearm and both of his feet were missing. Instead these appendages ended in fresh cuts, like they ended at a pane of glass.

“Those wounds are serious,” Ryouma said, zooming in with Discovery Channel. “They haven’t started to bleed yet, but as soon as time starts for him again he’ll die quickly. It’s sad, but there’s nothing I can do for him.”

“Maybe I can!” Jeremy shouted, his eyes twinkling. “My Stand can fashion clay into any shape I want and give it life. I should be able to create prosthetic limbs for this man to keep him alive. I mean, I’ve never tried it before, but I don’t see why I couldn’t. Alright, let’s do this! _Pulp!_” His Stand was oddly proportioned, with tiny legs, long arms with slender fingers, and a rotund belly. Its torso had a hole in it, through which something could be seen sloshing around. Pulp reached into the hole and drew out two handfuls of clay. As they watched it fashioned each one into an arm. It repeated this process twice more for the legs. “We won’t know if it works until we slap these on him, but I have a good feeling about it!”

Wan warned, “I’m going to move closer. If you want to save him, you’ll have to be ready.” Jeremy nodded to indicate he was prepared. Wan held his breath and stepped forward, getting the man into the range of his re-animation aura.

“Polnareff, look out!” the man shouted in a deep but accented voice. Before any of them had time to decipher what that could mean Pulp sprang into action. The clay feet and hands flew through the air and attached themselves to the stumps on the man’s body before he could lose too much blood. The man looked at his new limbs, then to the strangers in front of him. He blinked and looked around. “Are… do you speak Japanese?”

“We do,” Ryouma said. “You have… other injuries too. Not as serious, but we’ll have to do something about them. Hold still.” Discovery Channel stuck a few needles in the man’s back and the man immediately perked up. “Acupuncture can draw on hidden reserves of energy but it can’t actually heal your wounds. You might feel okay now but when the effect wears off you’ll crash, and crash hard. It would be best if you were in a safe place by then.” There was also a subtle implicit threat: ‘if you try to fight us your body won’t last’.

“Still, I must thank you for rescuing me from this place,” the man said, sitting cross legged in the void. “My name is Muhammad Abdul. The last thing I remember, I was in Egypt with my friends to defeat a terrible enemy. I was defeated… I thought I had died. But it seems you’ve saved me. Tell me, where am I?”

Abdul, Ryouma thought. He had heard that name before, but where? “I don’t know where this place is; I thought it was a special dimension created by this man, Wan, and his Stand. I’m with the Speedwagon Foundation.”

“Stand? Speedwagon?” Abdul laughed. “I am truly fortunate! No seer could have predicted good luck like this! I have good standing with the Speedwagon Foundation, I am sure they’ll be happy to see me back!” He stared at his clay appendages. “And not to be too critical, but they may be able to do something about getting the rest of my body back.”

“Sorry,” Jeremy said with an embarrassed smile. “It was the first time I’d ever done anything like that before, so-”

Abdul tried to raise his spirits, “Oh, that’s not what I meant! I am very grateful, because without these I would be dead! It is merely… hm.” He struggled to think of an adequate simile.

“Like putting the spare tire on your car,” Ryouma suggested. “It’ll do for the moment but it’s stopgap at best; you’ve got to get a real solution.”

Abdul slapped his knee and laughed. “Yes, exactly! So let’s get out of here. You lead the way.” He uncrossed his legs and stood up.

Jeremy told him, “Just, uh, stay close. If we get too far away from this man we’ll be stuck in time again.” Abdul nodded and walked past him. Jeremy was about to follow when he noticed Ryouma staring into the distance, his gaze assisted by Discovery Channel. Jeremy reminded him, “Hey, uh, Ryouma? Come on, we all have to stick together.”

Ryouma did not respond. For a moment it seemed that he had already gotten too far away and stopped, but after a moment he slowly reached up and adjusted his goggles. “There’s something else in here,” he said. “I think there’s something moving…” He squinted as he peered into the darkness. Jeremy and Abdul both looked to see what he was staring at but saw nothing; whatever he saw must have been very far away. Suddenly his eyes popped open and beads of sweat formed on his forehead. The color drained from his face and he swallowed hard. “Wan.” He was fighting hard to keep his voice level. “How fast can you run?”

Wan clutched the puzzle close to his chest. “Not… that fast? I’m not in the best shape, and that arrow got me in the leg…”

Ryouma shifted towards the door, unwilling to turn his back on whatever he was seeing. “We need to leave. Everyone, help him. Now. Right now.”

“Wh-what?” Jeremy started.

“Go!” Ryouma turned on his heel and pointed to the door. “There’s something else that can move in the stillness and it spotted us!”

That was all the explanation they needed. All of them ran toward the rectangle of light in the distance, the doorway back to the Speedwagon Foundation headquarters. Jeremy had one arm around Wan, the two of them doing a three-legged man race back the way they came. This slowed down everyone else, who had to restrict themselves to Wan’s pace. They had made it halfway there before something could be seen in the distance behind them. It quickly became apparent it was large and moving fast, and within only a few moments it was close enough to make out its shape. The thing following them resembled an eel or a snake, gliding through the empty space with zig-zag movements involving its entire body. It’s body moved with sinewy smoothness but was covered with debris from buildings and the earth, wearing it like armor. At first its head appeared to have sagging cheek jowls on each side of its head, but the truth was revealed when it opened its mouth. The sagging cheeks unfolded outward to open impossibly wide and three rows of teeth promised death to anything unlucky enough to be scooped up inside.

“It’s after Wan!” Jeremy said. “It wants to be the only thing to move!”

“Uwaaaa! Don’t let it get meeeeee!”

“Can’t have him,” Ryouma shouted. “If Wan dies we’re all toast.” At the same time, it was clear the creature was closing the distance and they were unlikely to make it to the door before being overtaken.

Abdul put his hands together and faced the monstrosity. “Go! _Magician__’s Red!_” A red humanoid with a bird’s head leapt from Abdul’s body with a screech, pushing a jet of red hot flames toward the beast. But as soon as the jet of flame got too far away it froze like it was trapped in a photograph and stayed immobile. “No good,” he said, turning back around to continue running. “It needs to get closer before my flames will reach.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Jeremy wailed. “If we let it get that close we’re all done for!”

Abdul watched as his flames approached the creature. It slithered out of the way of the flame and the fire sprang back to life as the creature approached and passed. “Hm, I have an idea. Sir, your clay! Make me a doll!”

“Huh?” Jeremy said. “But… but what good’ll that do? You saw how it-”

“Do it! Hurry!”

Pulp fashioned a stout clay doll and tossed it over. Magician’s Red took the doll and faced the creature once more. It was only a few meters behind them now, close enough to count the individual teeth. Magician’s Red tossed the clay doll at the creature’s mouth, but it deftly ducked below its arc. Just as the doll passed over its head it shattered from the inside, exploding into an ankh-shaped flame.

“_Crossfire Hurricane!_”

The flames shot down, bathing the eel in flame. It screamed a high-pitched wail of agony and fell down into darkness, pushed by the flames and suddenly affected by gravity.

“Woah!” Jeremy said. “Th-That was amazing! What an attack!”

“Fire is my specialty,” Abdul explained. “My Crossfire Hurricane splits my fire and it moves the way I want it to. If it fears fire it won’t be back.”

“Don’t be too sure about that,” Ryouma warned. “Look, it’s straightened itself out.”

It was true. The thing had recovered from the attack and began swimming parallel to the human’s path of retreat far below. Was it planning on looping around and coming from the front? Or…

“Not good!” Ryouma shouted. “It’s heading for the door! It’s going to destroy it! Wan, give me your other arm! Jeremy, we’re carrying him the rest of the way!”

“What?!” Jeremy shouted, but before he could react Ryouma had already taken Wan’s other arm and started dragging him.

“Careful!” Wan said. “The puzzle… my Stand!” He was still holding onto it in his right hand.

“Hold on tight!” Ryouma said. “If you let it go, we might get trapped forever. Abdul! Pick up the pace!”

They raced toward the door as the eel creature reached the underside. It raced upwards, mouth open to swallow the door whole. The group piled into the door at the same time, dumping themselves back into the Speedwagon Foundation HQ just as the creature’s jaws snapped shut on the doorway.

All of the men were on the floor, panting heavily from their exertion. The door was gone. Abdul, the last one through, picked himself up off the ground but stumbled when he tried to stand up. His clay foot had not made it out, so now his right leg ended in a clay stump. He lamented with a sigh, “Could not keep it even for ten minutes…”

“I’ve… I’ve decided,” Wan said. “Not to use… my Stand… ever again.”

Jeremy shook his head clear with an embarrassed chuckle. “Have to agree with you there. Oh, let me get a new foot for you Abdul…”

It was at this moment that Jotaro finally returned. He was reading a memo attached to a clipboard. “Swan is alright, she’s showing signs of intense self-loathing but she’s the kind of person who pushes her hatred outwards. If anything she’s more dedicated than ever to taking out Grandmaster- what are you all doing? And-” He gasped. “It can’t be… Abdul?”

Abdul turned and squinted. “… Jotaro? I don’t believe it, it is you! You look… much less impressive than I remember. These fine fellows… pulled me out of…” His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed backward on the floor.

“Abdul!” Jotaro shouted, discarding his clipboard and running over to him. “What happened? What did you do?!”

“He’s fine,” Ryouma said, flipping himself over but remaining on the floor. “He ran through all the energy my acupuncture gave him in one shot. I don’t know what happened to him before but he was badly injured when we got to him. Thankfully there’s no better place in the world for someone hurt to be. Ain’t that right, Jotaro?”

Jotaro nodded, recovering his composure. “Yes… the doctors of the Speedwagon Foundation will be able to help. We should get him looked at right away.”

* * *

Abdul was placed in a bed and allowed to sleep for a while. His clay limb replacements were enough to keep him alive, but he would need either medical grade prosthetics or a trip to Morioh to visit a certain Stand user in the near future. His other wounds were severe but stable, nothing like when he needed to rest and recover from nearly getting a bullet in his brain. Jotaro spoke to him later that night and met back up with Ryouma and Jeremy. “It’s not him,” Jotaro said, a little deflated. “Or at least not the Abdul I knew. His memory of events doesn’t match up with mine. He claims we all made it to Dio’s coffin but he was defeated by Dio and then attacked by a Stand user who transported his body to that place. My memory of it is different; I didn’t seen him die but by the time I reached Dio’s sanctum Abdul was already dead. He also says I was a lot bigger then.” He chuckled. “I suppose I have gotten weaker since those days, but I didn’t think it was that noticeable.”

“But he is still your friend, right?” Ryoma asked.

“He isn’t,” Jotaro said. “I think… he might come from another universe, where things went somewhat differently than they did in mine. I would have to talk to him more extensively to see if there are other differences. But…” He smiled. “You are right, in all the ways that matter he is my friend Mohammed Abdul. He’s still strong, and kind, and wise. And even if he’s not the Abdul I knew, I’m glad you rescued him from that place.”

“I am too,” Jeremy said. “He’s going to be a strong ally for us!”

“‘Us’?” Ryouma repeated. “Gonna be honest, I thought you were gonna bow out. You, uh, aren’t exactly graceful under pressure.”

“I’m, not going to lie,” Jeremy rubbed the back of his neck. “This is all scary as heck. I’m not really sure if I’m up to it. But… well, it’s like you said, Stand users attract each other. My Stand isn’t good for combat… if I run into someone really strong I’m dead meat. Especially with this Grandmaster Flash guy creating more Stand users… that’s not something I can ignore. If I try to run away it’ll catch up with me sooner or later. So, it’s better to hang out with really strong people like Jotaro and Abdul.”

“Hey,” Ryouma said, offended at being omitted.

“Uh, I don’t mean you’re weak! Just, you know, strong in a different way! Ha ha… ha… anyway, I’ll help as much as I can!”

Jotaro smiled. “We’re glad to have you aboard.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The GM did not remember what name he originally gave this Stand user or his Stand’s name, but given the obvious Hellraiser inspiration I gave him the name Wan Kuraibu (‘wan’ being Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound of a dog’s bark and Kuraibu being the pronunciation for the name ‘Clive’… so yeah, Clive Bark). I also renamed his Stand The Doors because, well, duh. The GM admitted this adventure was shameless self-indulgence, as he really liked Abdul/Avdol and wanted to give him a better ending than what he got. Combined with his preference for the ‘99 OAV animation over the DaviPro series… yeah.  
Anyway, I wrote that story so I could tell you the next one…


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